March 23, 2015 - Bridgewater, Nova Scotia

Hello Family,

This week we have got more cold weather. On Wednesday we got another 20 cm of snow. We were snowed in that day. But it looks like that we will get warmer weather this week. Yesterday it was -8 with a windchill of -20. It was really cold. But we had Church this week. So that was nice. People around her have been saying that this is the worst winter they've gotten in years. It is going to take a couple months before all the snow will be gone unfortunately. I don't want it to warm up dramatically though. That would cause flooding and wouldn't be good.

On Tuesday, we were supposed to meet with quite a few people but they ended up falling through. So instead we tried visiting members but none of them were home. Then we did some street contacting in downtown Mahone Bay. We contacted a couple of people but not many. Then we had dinner at Brother Freemen's which we do every Tuesday. We met with Lisa with President Wentzell after dinner. She had no questions about the Restoration or the video. But there was a language barrier. So we went over parts of the Restoration again and she said she has a hard time reading the mandarin Book of Mormon. So we showed her how to read them online on lds.org by zooming in. It's been a slow process with Lisa but we're continuing to work with her and be patient with her.

Thursday, things were back to normal. We helped shovel Sister Dorey's driveway out. She couldn't even open her door after the snowstorm and we actually helped shovel her on Tuesday as well.  We visited with Brother Chase and he seems to be doing alright. Norma is in the hospital right now so he is worried about her. 

We had our Skype interviews with President Leavitt after. He actually forgot about them so we had to text him to remind him. It was actually a really short interview this time.He asked me if I was being obedient and If I had any worthiness issues. I have been obedient and no worthiness issues. Then he said "That's great.. keep it up." That was the end of the interview.At night we shovelled a less active's pathway to her car.

Friday was a busy day. We planned for the upcoming week in the morning then in the afternoon we visited a sister. It was supposed to be an hour but it ended up being a two hour visit. We both agreed that that was longer than what it needed to be. Some Maritimers just love to talk so we need to do a better job at cutting them off.Later we headed off to the church for Games Night. We played an intense game of spoons. 

Saturday, we got called to help shovel the church roof. The person in charge of the church buildings in the stake called the bishop wanting us to shovel the roof because they were calling for rain Saturday night; they were afraid that with all that snow on the roof that with the rain coming, it would cave in. So we did that for two and a half hours. They weren't done by the time we left either. By the end I was exhausted.

Sunday, Church was back. It didn't seem like it rained that much either. The focus for sacrament meeting was the Atonement and Our Saviour's love for each of us. Sister O'Hearn (Which by the way is related to Laura Dunford) gave a personal experience of their daughter (Emma) almost dying when she was younger. That made her rely on the Lord a lot. She gave a really heartfelt and emotional talk on the Atonement. We went home-teaching with Brother Tupper in the afternoon. One sister has been dealing with divorce. It made me think of Julie and how we dealt with that. It was hard but we used the Atonement to help us overcome it and we now have a better understanding of the Atonement. We went knocking in the evening. One of the people we knocked into it told us "Why would you believe in Jesus Christ?" "There's no proof of Him ever existing." He said he believes in the bible though but doesn't think that has any proof. We testified of the Book of Mormon, but he wasn't really receptive. 

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder O'Brien